


The unknown shape of things

by lbmisscharlie



Series: Philosophy [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, Hair, Haircuts, Head shaving kink, Introspection, Post-Reichenbach, Shaving, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-08
Updated: 2012-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-30 19:23:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbmisscharlie/pseuds/lbmisscharlie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly wants to know the shape of herself, underneath that which she hides behind. She knows the way the human body works - cells replicating until they don't, body healing until it doesn't - and wants to make herself anew. </p>
<p>Written for <a href="http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/15253.html?thread=84209557#t84209557">this</a> prompt at the kinkmeme asking for any of the women shaving her head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The unknown shape of things

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by the wonderful greywash. Thanks, dear!

She weaves her fingers through her hair, brown and gold and yes, a bit of silver darkened and matted with water. It tightens in her hands, a heavy rope wrapped thickly around the broad of each palm. She can feel the fine wisps stuck down at her temples and her nape, baby-soft hairs, perpetually undone, giving her a hazy, childlike disarray no matter how polished the rest of her hair, the swipe of her lipstick. She thinks it probably suits her: soft, sweet hair, mouse brown and unassuming to match haphazard cardigans and trousers that never fit quite right. 

She ducks down into the bath, lets her hair go, and it spirals out around her in the movement of the water. Weightless, it floats in a halo; she can feel the drag of the water against the soaked strands with each turn of her head. She wonders what it would be like to have it gone. No heavy, comforting weight slung across one shoulder, no tendrils to twist ‘round her fingers in moments of nerves and boredom.

Her neck, bared. Her ears, her temples, the shape of her skull. Under the water she maps it, fingers searching through the thick strands to find the stretch of muscle at the top of her spine, the softness between. Fingers over bone: occipital, parietal, temporal. 

She thinks of the executions of queens, the proud bow of a bare head, the vulnerability and strength of a neck, sinews and muscles and bones and nerves.

Out of the bath, she plaits her hair, one thick heavy rope over her left shoulder, watching herself in the mirror. The tip of the plait brushes across the top of her breast, sticking to her damp, pink skin. Her body is blurred in the fogged-over mirror; she clears it with a swipe of her hand and reveals narrow shoulders, small, low breasts, straight, thin mouth – _your mouth’s too small now_ – and a face that’s perhaps a bit too sharp. 

It’s okay, though. Maybe it wouldn’t have been before – wasn’t, before, if she’s being honest with herself. Too sensitive by half to others’ unkind words, and maybe the memory still stings a bit but she’s thirty-one and she’s settled. She feels _in_ her body in a way she never had before, aware of her own hands and mind and eyes and what they can do. Aware of the pleasure she’s finally learned to take as her due. 

She knows what a body can do, what a body _is_ , inside, its organs and fluids and tissues and bones, the movement from life to lifeless not as instantaneous nor even as final as many suppose. The cells live on long minutes after the brain stops firing, the body still fights after the fatal wound, a heart beats in another’s chest.

She knows that a man can throw himself off a roof and walk away (not any man, though, and not without strategy). She knows that life and death are sometimes not defined by cells but by signatures, ink on a page. She knows that one can be mourned and still walk the earth.

Here she stands, feet sticky on the tile floor and knowledge heavy in her breast. She turns, pads down the hallway, naked and dripping, and finds a heavy pair of kitchen shears in a drawer. Back in the bathroom, she wraps the end of the plait around her hand, holds it taut away from her head, arm reaching back over her shoulder. 

In the mirror her narrow face is flanked by one thin arm, the triceps surprisingly developed, the soft fuzz under her arm dark and damp. She reaches back with the shears and, biting her lip and holding her breath, cuts into the rope of hair. 

She feels each strand loosen, fall free, the skin at the back of her neck prickling against the tension. The snick of the blades together is almost sickening, but she perseveres, cutting until the plait falls loose in her hand, a wet, lifeless rope. She lays it over the edge of the sink, frees her fingers with some difficulty, shakes off the stray strands. 

It hangs in a loose, ragged bob, the front strands sweeping her jawline. She searches in the cupboard for something to finish the job and sighs when she comes up empty-handed but for a pack of utilitarian two-blade Bics, pink with an ineffectual aloe strip. She holds one up and eyes her hair but thinks better of it.

She towels it off and resolves to walk down to the corner barber in the morning. Anthea might come with her, if she can spare a few hours off work, though the fact that it’s gone eight and she’s still not home doesn’t bode well.

++

When the door finally creaks open, the whine of the hinges almost apologetic, it’s half nine and Molly’s curled on the sofa, novel in her lap, pages untouched. The only sound of Anthea’s movement is the sharp click of her heels on the hardwood floor and Molly can tell her mood is contemplative; when she’s tired or angry the heels come off immediately, the sound of the clatter proportional to her mood. 

She notices instantly, of course. Her footsteps still at the threshold of the sitting room and she lets out a small hum, pensive and considering. Molly turns her head, meets her partner’s eye, and shrugs one shoulder.

“Okay then,” Anthea says, and it is. She leans over the arm of the sofa to kiss Molly, one hand touching her chin and lips soft, reassuring. She steps out of her heels now, flexing her feet before sitting down. Molly scoots to give her room, tucks her feet up so her body leans into Anthea’s. 

“What brought this on?” Her voice is mild, judgement-free as she slips one arm around Molly’s shoulders and eyes the ragged ends of her hair, lank from air-drying. 

Molly thinks and Anthea waits for her to put the words together. How to describe the fragility of the body, its stasis and its strength and the strange ephemerality of each cell replicating and dying, her body created anew unit by unit every hour of every day? “Our bodies, they change, but they don’t. They break so easily and I just – I wanted –” not to break, no, but to test her own strength, “– to _change_.”

Anthea frowns a bit and Molly knows she hasn’t described it right, hasn’t fit the words together in quite the right way. “I’m happy with who I am,” she reassures, because she – they – the two of them aren’t the problem, “but sometimes I wonder how else I can be. Not to start over or, or _leave_ ,” and the word has a power they both understand as they share the secret only two others know, “but to be here, to be me, but a little different.”

Anthea nods and Molly thinks maybe she’s got it – she does that, reads the meaning between the words – and with Molly she never fakes, never pretends to know less than she does, like Molly’s all too certain she does at work.

“You’re allowed to mourn him, you know. Even though he’s not really gone.” Molly fingers the uneven tips of the hair tucked behind her ears and thinks. Anthea hasn’t touched it, yet, her odd homemade bob but she’s looking at her like she wants to understand. Molly nods, because that’s part of it, probably, but not quite.

“I’m not rending my garments and – and – I’m not his widow. I mean, I don’t feel that, for him, anymore.” 

Anthea smiles and her exhale has the hint of a laugh. “I know, my love, but I know these past few months haven’t been easy, seeing everyone else mourn him and feeling you have to stay silent. This –” she fingers the strands at the edge of Molly’s ear, fingertips just brushing the tender skin, “– this is you not being silent.”

Molly turns her head, brushes their lips together, because that’s it, or close to it. “I was going to, to take it all off, to shave it, but I didn’t have anything but a razor and that just –”

“Bad idea?” Anthea supplies and Molly nods. She leans back a bit, contemplating Molly’s head. “I think you’d look quite pretty.”

“I want to know what it’s like, under there. I want to know the shape of my own mind.” To her credit, Anthea doesn’t laugh – she never laughs at Molly’s stumbling words, phrases that come out simultaneously exactly as she meant and awkward beyond words. She reaches instead, reaches and runs her fingers through Molly’s hair, up from her nape and over the crown as if searching out the hidden places underneath. 

She licks her lips and nods, kisses Molly on the temple – hair in her mouth – and says, “I’ll get us some clippers.”

++

It’s ten in the evening but it’s London and it’s Anthea and she returns a half hour later with a bag. The clippers within are somehow fearsome; Molly’s been imagining a beard-trimmer, something battery-powered and small, but these are a proper hairdresser’s tool, heavy and powerful.

They’re back in the bathroom, plait of hair still draped over the sink, and Anthea looks to Molly for confirmation, their eyes meeting in the mirror. Molly nods, and Anthea grasps the hair above her ear, gently guiding her head sideways, and runs the first swath through. It falls away in her hand and leaves a patch – number 3 blade so there’s still dark fuzz about a quarter of an inch long. 

She drops the hair in the sink and repeats the gesture, and Molly’s dully glinting hair falls away. The clippers buzz against her skull pleasantly, each sweep like a caress in Anthea’s capable hands. Molly finds herself watching her partner: lips pursed in concentration, hand steady and eyes decisive. She goes over each section from different directions to break up any marks, finally leaving behind an even fuzz.

She snaps the blade off and clicks on a zero, tilting Molly’s head forward to shape up the back. After a few moments of contemplation as she looks over her head from every angle, Anthea pronounces her finished. She stands back, clippers held loose in one hand, and lets Molly look without a word. 

Her ears stick out a little too much and suddenly her eyes seem huge, her cheekbones sharp slashes across the canvas of her face, bold and alien. She turns, catching in the corner of her eye the elegant round curve of her occipital, the sweep of her neck an elongated bow. Her eyes feel heavy with the unshed tears of an irrevocable decision, mourning not the loss of her hair but of that last wavering moment. She blinks them back, swallowing at the unexpected wave of strength that sweeps up her body from somewhere in her gut. 

She meets Anthea’s eyes in the mirror, smiles, and nods. Anthea grins back and sets the clippers down, slipping one hand around Molly’s waist and pulling her close. 

“You look beautiful. You look –”

“Strong,” Molly supplies, eyes on herself in the mirror.

Anthea squeezes her, presses a kiss to her shoulder. “Yeah.” They stay like that for long minutes, Anthea’s chin on Molly’s shoulder and their eyes both taking in the newfound shapes. Anthea kisses her again, lips to the firm ridge of her sternocleidomastoid as she turns her neck, and has to spit out the little stray hairs that stick to her lips. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” she murmurs and Molly laughs, the sound easy and loud in the small room. 

Anthea blows teasingly on the nape of her neck, the cool air across the new-shorn hair making her gasp. She brushes bits away with her fingertips, light and caressing, and Molly turns, starts unbuttoning her blouse, fingers moving against starched white cotton, and Anthea smiles. They undress each other, slowly and surely, a familiar task. 

In the shower, they run their fingers together over Molly’s head, feeling the sleek smoothness one way, the prickle-bite against the grain. Molly shampoos again, scrubbing fiercely under the water to free up the last stubborn ends, not relishing the idea of an itchy head in bed later. Behind her under the spray Anthea reaches around, cups her breasts in warm hands, nuzzles her lips against the sweet soft hair at the back of her head. 

Molly hums contentedly, lets Anthea kiss all over her head, mapping the shape under her lips. Each strand feels like a nerve ending, sensitive to every touch, and the press of her lips, the warmth of her breath twists a heat in her abdomen. While Anthea explores, brushing her cheek across her parietal, licking the exposed skin just behind her ear, Molly takes one of her hands, guides it between her legs. 

She can feel Anthea smile against her, teeth on her skull, and she reaches back, fists her fingers in Anthea’s still-long hair, inner arm brushing against her own; her mind reels at the contrast. Anthea’s fingers are quick and sure and her gasps are muffled by the water as their bodies arch together, Anthea’s steady and supportive as Molly’s nerves explode, deep insistent heat firing to the tip of each limb. 

Molly turns and they kiss, smiling and lazily happy, as the water runs against her skin and trickles down her neck. The water washes her anew and she wonders at temporality, at all her cells not now what they were and not yet what they will be.


End file.
